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Mind flayer
Mind flayers and master mind flayers are especially perilous monsters, capable of eating your brain, resulting in feeling stupid, becoming forgetful, or perishing as your last thoughts fade away. Wearing a helmet, preferably greased, can sometimes protect you against the brain-eating attack. If you die from intelligence drain while polymorphed, you will permanently die instead of reverting to your normal form. If you manage to eat a mind flayer corpse, you gain either telepathy or 1 intelligence point, with a 50% chance of each. You can sense their presence remotely, and if you have telepathy they can sense yours. Occasionally they will concentrate and release a blast of psychic energy. If they are peaceful and you are not creating conflict, it will "feel quite soothing" and no harm will be done. Otherwise, if they can sense your presence either via telepathy or sight, it will "lock on" to your telepathy or mind, and you will sustain d15 damage (halved with half spell damage). This is the only attack in the game that you need to deal with if you are protected by a boulder/jelly combination fort. Strategy Detection Be careful not to run up to a mind flayer in melee thinking that it is a dwarf king; for some players, dwarves are easy kills while mind flayers are very dangerous. If you have felt the mind flayer's presence, that is your cue to check whether that is a dwarf. The message "You sense a faint wave of psychic energy" is your clue that there is a (master) mind flayer somewhere on the level, but you won't see it every turn. Also note that dwarves will not be generated in Gehennom (but mind flayers may be generated in the Dungeons of Doom). Mind flayers as pets Advantages Mind flayers make excellent pets, as they make quick work of shopkeepers, and their telepathic outreach is then soothing to you rather than harmful. However be careful if your tame mind flayer becomes confused - he will easily do the same with you. Disadvantages However, in the late game, pet (master) mind flayers may wake up the Wizard of Yendor with their psychic blasts before you meant to fight him, causing you a host of problems. It is best to be very careful with such a pet in the later parts of Gehennom where the Wizard's Tower might be. Tame mind flayers may emit a "faint wave of psychic energy", which is indistinguishable from that of a hostile mind flayer. If "a wave of psychic energy pours over you", and it does not feel "quite soothing", there is a hostile mind flayer on the level. Also, watch out for jellies, which can kill any mind flayer that attempts to suck its brains, all sorts of shapeshifters and green slime which your mind flayer may eat or attack. Fighting a mind flayer Be cautious when fighting against a mind flayer. Here are some tips. Combat Wear a dunce cap or ring of sustain ability. Either will fix your intelligence, preventing its loss and thus brainlessness. The dunce cap, being a helmet, also has a chance of blocking the flay altogether. Neither will protect against amnesia from a successful brainsuck. Avoid melee. Try to attack the mind flayer with ranged attacks. Those annoying master mind flayers can resist some magic attacks like force bolt, but you can still throw daggers or other weapons, or use more powerful spells like finger of death (if you can cast them). Wear a greased helmet. A helmet has a good but imperfect chance of preventing the mind flayer's tentacles from reaching you, especially if you flee as soon as possible. Greased helmets always protect from flaying, but repeated attacks will eventually wear off the grease. Engrave or Burn Elbereth, or stand on a scroll of scare monster. Mind flayers respect Elbereth. However, Elbereth does not prevent them locking on to your telepathy. Scare them by some other method, for example, an expensive camera. This is not as secure as Elbereth, as a fleeing mind flayer may still attack you, but it is much less likely to. Note the mind flayers' high magic resistance, which makes any resistable attack unlikely to succeed, and a blind mind flayer will not respect Elbereth. Recovery Obtain a unicorn horn. There are many other good reasons to have a unicorn horn, but you can apply one to recover your lost intelligence after the battle. This is of limited use during combat, however, as it has a chance of not restoring your intelligence when you use it, possibly resulting in death from brainlessness the next round. A unicorn horn will not cure amnesia. Some people will collect a #named specimen of each identified object in their main stash to migitate the effects of amnesia. Special tactics Stoning It is possible to stone a (master) mind flayer. If you have a source of cockatrice corpses or eggs, or you find a cockatrice located conveniently near a mind flayer, wear gloves, wield the corpse (or egg), and strike the mind flayer in melee. It only takes one hit (unless the mind flayer eats a lizard corpse). Taming Mind flayers have high MR so they're very likely to resist taming; the charm monster spell might or might not work. Be prepared to have the mind flayer attack you if your attempt of taming fails. Genociding Many players find the amnesia attack so crippling that genocide becomes the best option. A blessed scroll of genocide on h''' will wipe out both standard and master mind flayers. However, do not do this if you are a dwarf - dwarves are also '''h, and this self-genocide has resulted in a lot of annoying deaths. Instead, only use an unblessed scroll and genocide "mind flayer" and/or "master mind flayer". If you can only genocide a single monster (i.e. you are illiterate and receive a genocide from a throne), it is generally best to genocide the master mind flayer, as the Summon Nasties monster spell can conjure one right next to you. The standard mind flayer usually appears some distance away, giving you the chance to deal with it safely. If using the scroll of genocide, do check that it is not cursed! If you send in a group of master mind flayers, they may kill you quickly, either by causing brainlessness in a few short turns, or (if you scare them away) by locking on to your telepathy until you die. This may also leave an annoying bones level. : Warning to Monks - NetHack does not recognize the alternate spelling, "master mindflayer". A Monk that attempts to genocide "master mindflayer" will instead genocide "master", thus wiping out all Monks and ending the game. This is because "master" is one of the rank titles for Monks, and NetHack ignores the extra word "mindflayer". (rgrn thread) : SLASH'EM recognizes the "mindflayer" spelling, so it is okay to genocide "master mindflayer" in SLASH'EM. But typo like "master mindfalyer" can still wipe out all Monks and end the game. Polymorphing Polymorphing into a mind flayer is very useful, as its brain eating attack is deadly to nearly anything. Monsters do not suffer brainlessness in the manner that players do, as they lack INT scores. When a player eats a monster's brain, it instead deals an additional d10 points of damage to simulate the brain loss. Additionally, you will gain d30 nutrition without risk of choking, and if your INT score is below the maximum (i.e. your own brain was sucked) it will be increased by d4. Note that the INT increase is subject to the normal polymorphed attributes rules, and will be reset when you revert to your normal form. Beware, as sucking a green slime will cause delayed sliming, and eating a cockatrice's brain will cause stoning. Eating brains is also not considered vegetarian, but this is only of interest to conduct players and monks. Becoming a master mind flayer also gives you a +10 base AC boost and still allows you to wear all the same equipment you were wearing before (including weapons obviously). On top of that, master mind flayers can fly and attack many times per turn which causes extreme damage to non-mindless enemies. Keep in mind, though, that your HP will most likely drop significantly (from say 250hp down to like 50) especially if you polymorph yourself at a high level. In SLASH'EM Mind flayers are slightly different in SLASH'EM. First of all, for some reason, the master mind flayer has three brain-eating attacks, while the normal mind flayer has five, the reverse of the situation in vanilla nethack. More importantly, though, the ring of free action provides luck-based protection against their (and all grab-based) attacks, starting at a 50% of blocking each individual flay and increasing to a 90% chance at maxed-out luck.SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2/mhitu.c#line954 This, in combination with a greased helmet, renders them much less of a threat. Also, in SLASH'EM, monsters can throw potions of amnesia, making a preventative genocide of mind flayers much less of a surefire protection against amnesia attacks. Mythology Mind flayers appear in Dungeons & Dragons as Illithids. D&D's creator, Gary Gygax, was reportedly inspired to create the monster after seeing cover art for a book by Brian Lumley. Encyclopedia entry References Category:Monsters